Smarter People
11:00 AM, 6th November, 2013
Presented by: Mebanshanbor Marbaniang, Nongan Perme, Zothan Kimi
Advisor: Anjali Mittal
Advisor: Anjali Mittal
An established approach to making a city smart: the city starts to collect data about all its various components, the data thus collected can be used to make the city a more efficient entity. Smart systems required can be designed for collection and analysing of the data. This data upon evaluation can be used to design and control the city’s infrastructure, buildings, transport, safety, etc.
Citizens of such a smart city would be required to be adept in the new technological systems. Studies have shown that this top-down approach tends to fail as it does not incorporate the specificities of a particular society/social group. In the Indian context, particularly, this issue is of grave importance due to the demographic composition, cultural and regional diversity. People are inherently different. They are incredibly individual even within a particular group. This is because each one of us varies in our behaviour, our attitudes, the way we respond to different things including change and the way we choose to live our lives. Barr And Gilg(2006) in their studies, have proven that any system when applied to people cannot force behavioural change. It cannot be implemented on people. It causes issues of marginalisation and systematic gaps. Rather it should work from the ground up and involve them right in their very own personal space. India already has certain large scale systems of people that function exceedingly well without using any form of ICT, which we call Indigenous Smart Systems. They are systems that are culturally and socially inclusive, are available to everyone, are sustainable and based on an intensive labour force that is networked together because of a common need. We believe that People are our biggest infrastructure – our biggest resource. And a Smarter System of People will network them to achieve sustainable lifestyles, using whatever means we have at our disposal to do so. |